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She tasted the salt of her tears, a hint of mint. Then she closed her eyes and her body slumped against him, his heat and hunger filling the empty numbness. His arms steadied her, pulling her more firmly into his embrace.
One hand stroked her hair, and he whispered, “Steady on.”
She rested her head against his shirt and sniffed.
His hands cupped her nape, tipping her head back. She shut her eyes, refusing to let him see the hopelessness, the hurt flooding through her.
“Look at me, Candace.”
Finally, she opened her eyes.
There was an expression on his face that caused her throat to constrict.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You’re such a bastard.” She discovered she was crying in earnest now. “How could you do that to me?”
“Candace—”
“Don’t touch me.”
She wrenched herself away and rushed from the room before he kissed her again…and she lost what little of her heart still remained intact.
Nine
In the summery morning light that streamed into his bathroom and sparkled off the white tiles, Nick stared at a face half covered in shaving cream in the mirror.
His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. Through the long hours of the night he’d been unable to shake from his mind the hurt, shocked look in Candace’s eyes. Her pain had haunted his dreams last night.
He didn’t much like what he saw; he wasn’t proud of himself.
Without flinching, he thought about how the women in his life might have reacted if they’d been caught in the same position as Candace: Bertha Williams, his grandmother, his sister…even his devious wife. And he came to one conclusion.
Every one of them would have fought to keep her child. And every one of them would’ve been stunned that he could threaten to cut a woman off from the child she’d given birth to.
Even if she had agreed to give that baby up…
Nick lifted his hand and carefully brought the razor down in a long sweeping line. In minutes the white foam was gone, the shave complete. His skin glowed, clear and unsullied by stubble.
Yet Nick suspected the same wasn’t true of his soul…
Once showered and dressed, Nick paused on the upstairs landing. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was already well past breakfast time.
Instead of heading for the stairs, he checked himself and went the other way. To the wing that held the nursery—and Candace’s room.
Where the landing widened into a sitting area, he stopped.
Candace had pushed the glass table aside and was lying flat on her back on the carpet. A DVD showing a group of mothers doing exercises with babies was playing on the television screen that hung on a wall. Candace’s arms were fully extended as she swung Jennie above her.
Both of them were laughing.
The shorts Candace wore were white and very, very brief. The ice-blue tank top fitted snugly over her curvy breasts.
Hell. The hollow in Nick’s chest contracted into a tight, hard ball.
Desperately he looked away, scanning the room. The place looked—sounded—like a home. In a way that the perfectly decorated space never had before.
It even felt like a home.
He dithered on the periphery, not wanting to break the mood.
But a movement must’ve given him away because Candace turned her head—and saw him. Her laughter stilled. She lowered the baby and started to sit up.
“Don’t stop,” he said. “It looks like Jennie’s having the time of her life.”
Candace smiled hesitantly, and Nick felt as if the room had been flooded with more sunshine.
His cell phone chose that moment to ring.
It was his doctor confirming that he was almost certainly Jennie’s father.
Nick thanked him for his help and killed the call. Staring at the woman on the mat, a heavy beat thundered in his ears.
Candace had told the truth. He hadn’t believed her. Once again the sense of his soul being less than pure struck him. He shook off the thought, strode forward and sank onto the floor beside her, his legs awkwardly long in the confined space.
Jennie reached a hand toward him, and he gave her his. She grasped his thumb with a grip that was surprisingly strong.
“You’ll get wool from the carpet all over your suit,” Candace warned, folding slim, bare legs under her and resting Jennie in her lap, still attached to his finger.
Nick forced his eyes away from her smooth limbs.
Down, boy.
So this was how she was going to play it. As if that ugly scene between them last night had never happened.
For a split second Nick considered forcing the issue, trying to explain his confusion—what Jennie was coming to mean to him. Strangely enough, he hadn’t needed the doctor’s call to care about the baby. That had happened all by itself in some miraculous way.
